43. It all starts with the Tower of Babel, which you can read about in the Bible. Which book of the Old Testament (or Tanakh) relates the story?
From Quiz Babel
Answer:
Genesis
Here's the Bible story. Some time after the Great Flood that wiped out all humanity except for Noah's family, humanity had repopulated the planet. "At first," says the Bible, "the people of whole word had only one language...." (Genesis 11:1, GNT). They migrated to Babylonia, and they said to each other: "Now let's build a city with a tower that reaches the sky, so that we can make a name for ourselves and not be scattered all over the earth." (Genesis 11:4, GNT)
Not so fast! "Now then," said God, "these are all one people and they speak one language; this is just the beginning of what they are going to do. Soon they will be able to do anything they want! Let us go down and mix up their language so that they will not understand each other." (Genesis 11:6-7, GNT)
So the people were scattered and their languages confounded. And they stopped building the city and the tower that became known as Babel. In many translations, such as the Good New Translation that I've used here, it is called the Tower of Babylon, but the Hebrew-derived designation "Babel" remains the most culturally widespread.